MMOs have always been my favorite genre of games; expansive worlds, swarms of people, and constant renovation of the game all create an experience that is unlike anything that can be found in a single-player game. Can all games be turned into MMOs? No. However, there are some games that really lend themselves to the genre. So, I thought of five games that should be turned into MMOs.

5. Bioshock

Bioshock has created a huge and expansive world, and with the multiple-universe plot twists that were implemented in Bioshock Infinite, could there be a universe where Andrew Ryan or Comstock’s plan came to fruition? Allowing for the game to come out of the water, or down from the air, and onto the natural world, it could allow for some interesting ideas. Keep the first person style; keep most of the controls (allow for easier switching between Vigors [Plasmids], and guns); keep the atmosphere. Throw in a larger open-world, but maybe throw time travel into the mix and make Columbia and Rapture raid-type encounters.

It would be awesome if it allowed players to pick a faction to join. Maybe in one universe Comstock and Andrew Ryan both exist at the same time, and you the player has to pick a side, or maybe there’s an underground resistance faction. Who knows, the possibilities are endless! I love this franchise and I think a well executed MMO, could really flesh out its lore even more, and make for some really interesting gameplay experiences.

4. inFAMOUS

The Ray Sphere goes off and a bunch of people begin to come into their dormant powers. I want to be one of them! Sure DC Universe Online is your typical superhero MMO, but inFAMOUS could give a totally different twist on the genre. The idea about inFamous that I like the most is that the people who have these superhuman powers were once just your average people. They have fallacies, and they’re easy to identify with. DCUO tried to mix this idea into its game, but I think inFAMOUS could pull this off with a little more finesse and style.

As far as gameplay goes, I would have everyone pick one main power, and then one power that they minor in, think along the lines of Final Fantasy XI main/sub job system. This would allow for some creative combinations of powers, and would give everyone an unique playstyle. This would also force the developers to flesh out the already existing powers and to provide some new ones for further variation, which would be absolutely amazing.

3. Borderlands

Borderlands is basically already an MMO, it’s just missing all the people running around. Buy a few servers, load Borderlands 1 and 2 maps onto it, and just let people go crazy. It’s boggling that this hasn’t already become an MMO because I’m sure it would be incredibly well received on the new consoles.

2. Kingdom Hearts

How awesome would this be? Imagine a Kingdom Hearts game where you are the protagonist and you get to wield your personal designed Keyblade. In the events before Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, there was “The Great Keyblade War” where thousands of Keyblade Warriors battled for the Xblade. If that many Keyblade Warriors once existed why can’t they again? With each iteration of the franchise, more and more Keyblades are presenting themselves, so why can’t there be thousands of Keyblades sometime in the future?

I could see this game functioning like the original Guild Wars where there were city hubs, where all the players could gather and trade items, but they would be required to split into small groups to participate in instanced dungeons. I would keep the classic Kingdom Hearts battle system, just instead of Donald and Goofy by your side, there would be other Keyblade Warriors. This could also be an amazing action PvP MMO; maybe the Keyblade Warriors have to train in arenas against one another. How cool would that be? Throw some Disney into the mix, and you’ve got a winning recipe for a fantastic MMO.

1. Pokémon

We all saw this one coming, as it is probably the most vocalized by the fan base for an MMO iteration. One could argue that the games have been inching their way towards this idea for some time. With each new installment of the franchise, the accessibility of trainer-to-trainer interaction has become easier and easier. Ten years ago, to battle against or to trade with another person you not only needed a friend with the game (or just a friend in general), you also needed a link cable. Now battling and trading is only gated by a quick button push and a file save.

Imagine an open world Pokémon game, that allowed for all trainers to connect to a server and play together. A good addition might be a battle timer, something akin to Final Fantasy X-2 that way decisions would have to be made a little quicker when battling against other people. Aside from that, Pokémon has always been an innovative franchise and they have yet to steer their fanbase wrong, so I assume that if a Pokémon MMO could be made, and made correctly, Game Freak are the guys to do it.

So what do you guys think? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Be sure to leave some feedback in the comment section below!

Mike Morrissette is one of MONG’s Editors. He also has an unhealthy obsession with The Green Lantern and anything involving Nutella. You can follow him on twitter, or friend him on PSN at HaughtyPride.

With the 15th anniversary of the game that started it all, Everquest, I decided it might be a good idea to give some background on SOE's newest developing games, Everquest Next and Everquest Landmark. What I'm really interested in, is how these games may very well change the landscape of MMOs as we know it.

Art Direction

Stylized-Realism

Okay, let's talk about the art direction. What I love about Everquest Next's art direction is that it is very stylized. The game was built from the ground-up with a sort of cartoon-style that allows for various types of architecture to exist without it being totally unbelievable.

Clearly this is not the type of designs that were in the original WoW, but because it's stylized, it looks like it fits into the world.

For example, let's compare World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV for a second. WoW has a super stylized art direction, which allows for multiple terrain / cultural influences. It's amazing how each expansion gives the players a vastly different culture reference, but does it in a way that we the players, believe that it fits within the world. This is also why WoW can get away with some of their more outlandish armor designs. The game is not meant to look realistic, but everything is meant to look as though it belongs, and if the world is cartoon-esque, then virtually everything could potentially fit within the world.

These giants just have some glaring artistic differences between them and the world in which they are found.

Now, we come to FFXIV which takes a much more realistic approach. Since FFXIV is less stylized, it has a better graphics set, allowing for a more immersive world. The problem with this approach however, is that the designers cannot deviate from this mentality. So, for example when FFXIV had the cross-game event with Dragon Quest, the monsters from said event didn't quite fit into the game's design. Now you could argue that that had been the point of the event, but for better or worse this event sucked the players out of the immersive world, and reminded them that they were only puppeteers controlling their puppets through a window.

What does this mean for Everquest Next? Well, with their art direction, the game is going to feel more-so like a game, rather than an immersive experience. However, with the graphical capabilities that the developers have showcased, it seems that this game might almost be a hybrid of these two art forms. The game seems to meld the cartoon art style of WoW, while still retaining realistic scenery, so this mélange will be very interesting to see how it all plays out.

Gameplay

Gameplay is going to be the area where Everquest Next and Landmark really take a drastic turn when it comes to how MMOs have traditionally been played. We have only seen snippets of the combat of Everquest Next, but from those snippets huge differences are seen almost immediately. The first being a totally interactive terrain. What this means for gameplay is that your actions can directly affect the world around you. No longer are the days of hits "1, 2, 3, 7, repeat" and simply bashing a mob in the face until it falls over and you gain some experience points. Do you see a bridge in Everquest Next? Yes? Great, go destroy it! Did you bump into that tree? Are you made at said tree? Do you hate said tree now? Great! Blast it with a fireball and watch that baby burn.

On the flip-side with Landmark, the player base can virtually create anything. The possibilities are endless and if you'd like, simply take a look at the youtube channel. The game in essence mixes together Minecraft with traditional MMO flare, so to see how well these two play together will be amusing. Why shouldn't your actions have baring on the world around you? If I wanted, I could easily dig a hole in my backyard. I could also build a tree house if I really wanted to, so then why shouldn't I be allotted the same freedom within a virtual world? With the increases in technology and graphical power in modern computers, hopefully we will see more trends akin to these ideals.

Development

Development has also taken a very different approach than previous titles. The developers are in direct contact with the player-base now. Weekly there are new questions posted on the official website that ask the players what it is that they would like to see within the game, often times in the form of multiple choice questions, that then receive their own forum threads so that they can be further discussed. This sort of developer-player relationship started with Producer Letters, and Live-Letters of FFXIV, but have been further elaborated on by EQN. These regular questionnaires and round-table discussions have never been a norm of the MMO community nor any genre community, so could this idea take some hard traction, and influence other video game developers to take up this method? Who knows, but I'm sure a majority of people would be inclined to say that they would like to see something like this become a normal part of the development cycle.

Everquest has always been an iconic, meta-changing sort of game, and I expect nothing else from Everquest Next and Landmark. Hopefully these games are a glimpse into what we can expect for the future of MMO gaming.

Artists don't get enough credit for the amazing work that they do. Why? Because normally we're too busy slicing-and-dicing up bad guys, blowing buildings to bits, or electrifying our enemies from afar to even care about what our surroundings look like, or who was behind all the textures or general design of the game. So, every so often I want to point out and applaud one game artist who I think has done an overly amazing job, maybe even learn a thing or two about their life in the process. How exciting. I'm excited. Let's get started.

Rosie Rappaport

Okay, here's the thing, I live for Everquest, and everything that it stands for. The countless hours that I have sunk into Everquest and it's various related series, is immeasurable. As such, I have grown a certain fondness for its art style. So, I began to wonder, who is behind all these fun textures and awesome equipment? That is when I stumbled upon dear ol' Rosie. This woman has been on the art team for various Everquest games, and Free Realms as well, not that Free Realms is anything to brag about, but it did have a decent art direction. Rosie has been a Senior Art Director at SOE for almost 11 years, starting in 2003. Before that however, she got her starts at Blue Sky Software, working as an artist. That was until she landed her job at SOE working as an artist on the original Everquest game in 1995. Basically, good ol' Rosie has had her hands in every single Everquest game to-date, including Everquest Next.

Everquest Next: Landmark is currently in its Alpha Stage

What I find super awesome about Rosie, is that she has an art direction, a stylization, that is uniquely her own. Her style really shines through when it comes to Everquest Next. There are common elements that help make the world feel as though everything belongs, it is slightly cartoon-like, but it is beautiful none-the-less. Everquest Next: Landmark is currently in its Alpha stage. You can buy an Alpha Key here. Rosie appears on various developer's videos, where they explain what will be coming to the game. And, if you want, you can vote for certain features that you would like to see incorporated, which is a great way for the developers to reach out to their audience and for the two to work together in a sense. As far as Landmark goes, there are a couple streamers on Twitch, and the concept looks interesting. More importantly though, the content in the game looks amazing, and it's thanks to Rosie Rappaport.

Every Friday I want to sit down and just write about something that infuriates me to no end about the world of gaming. Today's topic of choice? The new wave of "casual" gaming in MMOs and how it has destroyed the medium as a whole.

First let's start out with what an MMO is and how it functions. The idea of an MMO is to allow a massive amount of people to play simultaneously. We're talking roughly 3,000 to 5,000 people at the same time on the same server. That's a staggering amount of people all logging in within the same time frame and working towards various goals together or against each other depending on the game. Why play an MMO and not something like say, Skyrim or so other single-player game? The answer is simple, in an MMO there are other people. Here is where we begin to find the problems with MMOs in today's world. They try to cater to the single-player experience, and that directly goes against everything that an MMO is supposed to be.

This was a legit game

Way back when, in the good ol' days there were MMOs such as Everquest and Final Fantasy XI. These both were and are arguably my absolute favorite MMOs to-date. Why? Because there was a sense of community and comradery because the game forced the people on the server to come together to work towards common goals. You could not level without a group of at least four other people. You could not progress through the story without at least one other person with you on your journey. You couldn't do anything without other people, period. Not only that, but the leveling took time, getting through the story took time, doing anything took time.

Easily my favorite MMO to-date

What we have now, is an abundance of games that refuse to come back to the roots that made MMOs so popular in the first place. Let's take Final Fantasy XIV as an example. I love this game to death because I see potential in it. In practice however, this game falls into the same pitfalls of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the largest shared pitfall of their's being that their idea is, "The real game starts at max level". Let's talk about what is wrong with this thought process, and how it affect current games. Why does the game start at max level? Why? You're basically saying that your whole leveling process is a tutorial that is meaningless. Who even actually enjoys the tutorials in games? No one, that's why so many games now attempt to hide their tutorials in some sort of a glorified teaching stage. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. More often than not though, the tutorial is largely arbitrary. So, out of curiosity, why not make the leveling a part of the actual game? For example, I was able to level from 1-50 in the course of three days in FFXIV. 3 days. That's all it took. In Everquest, I hadn't reached max level until a year into playing the game, same goes for FFXI. In those games not only did getting to max level mean something, it was also impressive when you saw someone at max level decked out in all sorts of cool looking gear. It gave you something to aspire to, it gave you something to hope for. Was it annoying having to look for a group in-order to grind on mobs for hours at a time to only get a fraction of your level bar? Yes, it sucked. But guess what? If you want your accomplishments to mean anything at all, the journey to obtaining them have to be horrendous.

So much potential

Which brings us to the new age of instant gratification in games. Who doesn't absolutely love hearing that little *ring* that plays once you've progressed your character? Everyone. Everyone does, because it's fun to know that you're getting stronger. But, that *ring* is only so fun for so long. After hearing that same ring 17 times within an hour, it can get rather annoying and meaningless. At this point, I question why even keep the leveling system in MMOs? What's the point? It would probably be more beneficial to simply rule out the leveling system altogether, and just create something more sandbox style. The problem with sandbox however, is that the story has the potential to be scattered. Up coming MMOs such as Everquest Next, hope to combat this idea, but we'll see how the theory plays out when it's released to the masses. Regardless, the important thing to remember about MMOs and MMORPGs in-particular, is that the journey is important, and by claiming that the leveling process is simply a tutorial that you can speed through in a matter of days, destroys any feeling of a "journey to the top".

Not only that, but the content that the developers worked on for so long, is basically sprinted through and then forgotten. You don't even have to run through zones to enter dungeons anymore. No, now it's just a button's click away. You can log onto the game, and basically forever stay within one single city and be able to access anything through a drop down menu that magically teleports you into any instanced dungeon in the game. This sounds fantastic in theory, who wouldn't want to do what they want, when they want? But by doing so, server communities are destroyed, because they are never given the opportunity to grow because you could in practice level to max level, and attain the highest tier level of gear, all by NEVER grouping with anyone on your own server. Listen. If you want to play alone, then go play Skyrim or one of the various other single-player games out on the market. DO NOT complain that you can't get things done alone in an MMO, that would be like saying that you want to order a fried egg in an ice cream shop. I mean, what? How does that make sense? It doesn't and it's those kinds of overly powerful voices and mindsets that are destroying MMOs today.

This is the problem we're currently seeing

In short, this instant gratification, "casual" mind-set of MMOs needs to go away. Next week, I hope to rant about the verticality or "Gear Treadmill" that for whatever reason has come about in MMOs, and that are further destroying the genre as a whole.